


From Kids to Cats

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cats, Gen, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 09:38:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7503333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The paladins have turned into cats.</p><p>Allura is at the end of her rope, yet again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Kids to Cats

“Let me get this straight,” Allura spoke, rubbing her forehead with one hand in an attempt to stave off a headache. “You decided that the best way to test out a ray you found in the depths of the castle… was to test it on the Paladins?”

“Now, now, Princess Allura!” Coran was very quick to defend himself. “They agreed to it! And it didn’t kill them!”

“Only because you riled up Keith and Lance to make it a competition! Coran, you turned them into cats!” With that, she gestured roughly to the patch of the floor all of the paladins were currently occupying.

It was true. Where previously there had been five young humans, fully decked-out in their uniforms… there now sat five cats. A chubby tortoiseshell cat took the place of Hunk. A dark fluffy cat was a shoo-in for Keith, with the tabby shorthair that was Lance was already raising his hackles at him. A simple black-and-white cat was Shiro, easily identifiable by the white stripe going down his head, and a small mottled cat sat blinking where Pidge had previously been perched.

“Coran, fix them!” she demanded, gritting her teeth. At his lack of immediate response or movement, her scowl deepened. “Coran… you can fix them, can’t you?”

“Now, now, just because I don’t have an immediate solution doesn’t mean I can’t solve this!” the Altean protested, lifting his hands in his own defense. “It’s a piece of Xoraxian technology from my father’s time, likely forgotten about in wake of the revolution that occurred shortly afterwards among the colonies. In fact…” He turned it over in his hands. “I would say that the dating would put this at precisely-”

“Coran.” Allura cut him off. “Just- just fix it. I’ll…” She turned back towards where the paladins should be, only to pause. There… were none. They were all gone. She sighed, slumping forward in a decidedly unprincesslike way. “I’ll track down the cats.”

“Right you are! I’ll start by reverse engineering the third switch on the underside-”

“Coran.”

“Right, right, going.”

Inhale, exhale. Allura was on the chase. Hunk was easy to find - she only had to move a few feet to discover him basking in a ray of light. With exasperated fondness, the princess had to smile, before squatting down and gently stroking along his side. He purred like a lion’s roar. Fitting. “You’re going to be the easy one, aren’t you?” She glanced to the side - her mice were perched on the closest chair. “Keep an eye on him for me, please? But don’t get too close, he is still a cat, and, well… he is Hunk.”

She could feel the acknowledgement through their bond, and with one more stroke, the princess set off to the find the other four.

Lance and Keith were also easy. Just follow the sound of the hissing and a few yowls and there they were, backs arched and fur on end as they circled each other by the doorframe. Allura surveyed them for a moment with a slight sigh. A fight was the last thing she wanted - she had no idea how to treat injured cats, if they even _could_ here. She wasn’t looking forward to figuring that out.

“No,” the princess told them firmly, but the cats didn’t react. “No!” The second and louder exclamation made them jump and Allura took the opportunity to step in between them and scoop up one of them - Keith, she saw upon looking. “I’m going to have to separate you two…”

She hesitated a moment, trying to figure out where she could possibly put them, before her eyes lit upon the cryo chambers. Aha…! Holding a squirming Keith in her arms - he didn’t scratch her, though, did he recognize her? - she marched towards the chambers, picking one and setting Keith down and immediately closing it.

Sure, Keith looked very upset to be stuck in such a confined space, but she wasn’t going to turn them on **and** now she could find them all.

Lance went limp and pliant in her arms when Allura went for him, cuddling up to her chest, and she took an extra moment with him, kissing the top of his head in a manner she would _never_ do if he were his typical human self. As a cat, though, Lance was quite adorable, and it was a shame that she had to put him in a cryo chamber (separate from Keith, of course).

Allura was just trying to figure out whether to go back and retrieve Hunk to put him in one, or head after the other two missing cats, when a faint flicker of alarm sounded through her bond with the mice. It quickly increased to full on panic, and the princess turned to _bolt_ back to where she had left them, fearing the worse.

Hunk had changed position to a lit spot on the couch, but he wasn’t after or affected by the mice twittering in panic on the couch arm. Instead, he was staring at something else intently, ears perked. “Hunk, what are you…?” she murmured, and then crouched next to him so she could follow his line of sight.

A cat that was unmistakably Shiro was stalking the mice, creeping forward, and Allura cursed under her breath, straightened up, and STOMPED, yelling as she stormed towards Shiro. “No, no! We don’t go after the mice! Bad Shiro!” The cat froze, ears flattening, and she quickly reached down to grab him as he tried to dart, nabbing him by the scruff of the neck.

They had had similar creatures back on Altea, and it seemed that their methods worked just as well on Earth cats. Hastily, Allura carried the now compliant Shiro to the cry pods, shoving him in with Keith, and then returning (FAR more gently) for Hunk, who got to share with Lance.

She mopped her brow. Good. Four down, one to go.

Unfortunately, Pidge proved to be the most elusive of the lot. The doors were closed, as were the vents, so Allura wasn’t sure where she could’ve-

Allura looked _up._

Perched on one of the decorative ledges of the room was the small cat that was Pidge, and the princess let out a sigh of relief. While she wasn’t sure how she was going to get Pidge _down,_ at least she knew where all of them were. There really weren’t words for how grateful she was for that.

“Right!” announced Coran, striding into the room wielding the same device he had used earlier. “It wasn’t that hard! All I had to do-”

“Coran, change them back. Now.”

The sheer exhaustion in her voice startled her advisor, and he blinked at her before grinning. “Right you are, princess! Now… where, um, are they?” Wordlessly, Allura pointed to Pidge. “Oh, number five!” He squinted, taking careful aim with the ray gun, and sent a beam of light Pidge’s way.

There was a flash, a yelp, and one very human Pidge was tumbling down from a ledge no longer big enough to support her. Allura caught her bridal style, spinning slightly, and gave her a smile. “Welcome back to humanity.”

Pidge blinked behind her glasses, startled. “Was… Was I just a- Oh, quiznak, my mouth tastes _awful.”_ Allura set her down and left the trans girl to the process of scraping fur off her tongue, leading Coran over to where she had locked up the other paladins.

A flash of light later, and she had a very disgruntled Keith and an apologetic Shiro on her hands. “Really, Shiro, it’s fine,” she reassured him. “You were acting on your instincts.”

The black paladin didn’t seem too ready to accept that. “Still, if I had hurt them…”

“But you didn’t, and that’s what matters.”

Hunk and Lance were the most unfortunate (for Allura, at least) turned back. Hunk yawned, standing up and stretching, and promptly went to talk to Coran about the exact mechanics of the device. Pidge joined them, apparently recovered from her traumatic experience of fur-on-her-tongue. No, that wasn’t the bad part.

What was bad was the way that Lance sidled up to her, grinning brightly and with a faint blush to his cheeks. “You _kissed_ me, princess. I knew you’d come around to my charms eventually. No one resists the _Lance.”_ Both Shiro and Keith looked very disgruntled by this development, and for a moment, Allura considered playing with this to incite just a bit of jealousy. She wouldn’t mind if Shiro made some sort of move, and she was sick of waiting for Keith and Lance’s “UST” (as Pidge and Hunk labelled it) coming to a head. Then Lance slipped an arm around her shoulder and leaned in.

Allura clocked him.


End file.
